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Maybe a 100th person in this thread can chime in to explain how they were after the four “best” teams? The committee’s rationale and goals and mission at how they arrived at the conclusion that an undefeated power five conference champion isn’t worthy are understood. It was understood before any of you explained it to me. It doesn’t make it just. An anonymous committee member said FSU wasn’t selected because “they can’t win the playoff in their current state”, which is offensive because it’s antithetical to the very concept of collegiate competition. How many times has an underdog prevailed in college sports when deemed unable to win in their current state? Hundreds. Ask Cardale Jones about that. The bigger thing is you all think we’re talking about Florida State and Alabama when what we’re actually talking about is a committee gaming their own system to make things work for a preferred school/TV draw - I don’t know why any fan of sports would support that.

They did the wrong thing for cynical financial reasons. It’s :censored:ing lame and it’s :censored:ing lame to shill for ABC, Nick Saban, and the college football playoff. At least See Red has the excuse of being a Florida fan. False equivalence. FSU and Alabama compete for the same recruits and coaches in a sport that has a finite pool of eligible players. They play common opponents and occasionally each other. It’s more like saying the Yankees were better than the Dbacks because their division is harder and then using that logic to give them the Dbacks’ spot in the wildcard round.

It has been the end-all for most of college football forever until like four days ago. Alabama shouldn't've have lost to Texas and I can't believe everyone's fine with throwing out that loss like it didn't happen. The system currently in place sucks. That's been my point since this started. An expanded playoff will solve for this, but it'll create other, worse issues and further devalue regular season results. My system would be the best and most fair while also maintaining the importance of the regular season. The committee has financial self-interest in seeing their preferred teams, which is why they disagree with that premise. I don't know why normal people would shill for them. I've never wavered off of this position. Record only matters when two teams are tied. Georgia is probably better than Washington and Michigan, but I'd never argue for them to be in the playoff ahead of them. They didn't earn it same way Alabama didn't earn it. Win all your games and you don't have to stump for a spot, unless you're FSU this season. Did you see where I said "Maybe Liberty should be one of the teams! You tell Texas "hey good season, but if you wanted to control your fate you blew that when you lost to Oklahoma. Good luck in the Cotton Bowl or whatever."

Nobody's arguing they aren't one of the four "best" teams. It's that the playoff shouldn't be the four best teams, it should be the teams who achieved their way in. Alabama didn't do that! If it was actually the four best teams then Georgia should have Washington's spot. If it was the actual four best teams then have Georgia, Alabama, OSU, and Michigan play in the first week of September. If it was the actual four best teams then just give a trophy to the best recruiting class every summer. The four best teams thing can't even be consistent in its own dumb logic. What you and the committee are saying is FSU's perfect record essentially doesn't count because of an inconvenient injury to a QB, which is unfair to them and sucks for larger competition reasons. Maybe Liberty should be one of the teams! You tell Texas "hey good season, but if you wanted to control your fate you blew that when you lost to Oklahoma. Good luck in the Cotton Bowl or whatever." The reason I think it sucks so hard for FSU is they achieved the primary objective of college football and weren't given the chance to finish for reasons outside of their control. I said this when Cincinnati made the playoff, which took a perfect storm of circumstances and the committee tried as hard they could to :censored: them too until the conditions ultimately gave them no choice - If it becomes possible for other conferences beside the SEC to make the playoff then it'll have an evening effect of talent in college football and it'll be a better product. That hope is dying faster than ever with conference realignment, but I'm right. FSU doesn't need style points when they have a better record than Alabama and Texas. I don't know why this is hard to grasp.

Why would he bring up Texas when they beat Alabama? In a just system their case for the four spot is solid. It goes without saying that FSU should be third and got hosed twice, but of the five schools Alabama is the team who doesn't have a case if we're going off the actual results. And actual results should matter otherwise why did we play the season? Bolded: Then they didn't even achieve that because they're missing Georgia and OSU who are better than Washington and Texas. They're having it both ways. Is Alabama better than FSU? PROBABLY, but they lost a game and if you just go off the results then this sort of silly argumentative subjectivity doesn't enter the equation, which is why the stated mission shouldn't be to find the four best teams, it should be to find the teams who earned their way in, which Alabama didn't. If they wanted an air-tight case they shoulda beat Texas.

Although I can't stick up for the unique way he chose to phrase that, I'm actually with Unocal on this one . The matter is FSU should be third ahead of both Texas and Alabama, but you have to take 4 teams so you take the 3 undefeated teams because they earned that by winning every game on their respective schedules and then you pick between Texas and Alabama. Texas beat Alabama so it's not even a question as to who should be fourth. They hold the tiebreaker. It's very clearly cramming Alabama into this that is the problem so that's where the lion's share of the ire is going. Like I said earlier, there's exactly 4 teams with a case - The 3 teams with undefeated records and the team who holds the tiebreaker over the #4 team. Alabama's case is they're Alabama and the committee said we can't have a playoff without the SEC, which are both really dumb reasons to elevate them over FSU.

Quote me next time. The Bengals got away with that one, but the cheap flag the refs gifted the Rams late in the game that made a 4th and 8 into first and goal from the 1 more than made up for it. They didn't win the game. What else you got?

Oh stop. This is the lamest controversial call ever. First of all, he didn't throw it "after the whistle". He threw it, he wasn't out of bounds, and the whistle doesn't blow until the ball is at Boyd's hands so no Raider defender was actually affected. And if they had called it dead it would've unfairly wiped out a real TD by the Bengals. They made the right decision there. Play the video, close your eyes, and hit space bar to pause it when you hear the whistle. The whistle begins to sound (incorrectly) when the ball is here. Had zero impact on the play.

This was always irksome. If the shoulder stripes on the blue jersey had just flipped the white stripe to the other side of the gold stripe closest to the collar then there'd be effectively no stripe inconsistency from blue jersey to white jersey because the white stripe on the white jersey would be in the same place, it would just be invisible because it'd be up against the white base of the jersey. Feels like they went out of their way to create that unnecessary inconsistency.

Phoenix residents, is Desert Ridge actually a good location? Not as bad as West Glendale, but still looks like it's outside the heart of the metro.

The faculty voted to turn down the invitation to the Rose Bowl because "Football was becoming too big at The Ohio State University" and I've always kind of thought that maybe they had a point. LOL Can you imagine that ever happening now?

This unlocked a repressed memory of when the officials gave the Chiefs a do-over on third down late in the AFC Championship game after the Bengals stopped them and then flagged the Bengals on some cheesy ass bulls*** on the do-over third down. https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-official-explains-apparent-extra-down-for-chiefs-in-afc-championship-win-over-bengals-061923429.html

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This is the way. This is how I am as a MAC fan and it's nice (except my school never wins the MAC while the vile and despicable Redhawks fall assbackwards into a title every five years or so in between seasons of being laughably bad). You just get to worry about your little league, you don't have to pay attention to all of college football, which feels huge and overwhelming. You just focus on your little section of the country. Well, at least you used to when the conferences were like ten teams and made geographic sense. They even killed that. It's really funny to me if you look back at like the 30's and 40's and how many teams claim national championships for the same year. It was kind of a joke.

The playoff should be the Champions League where all the conference champions go, no at large bids, and I don't see why that would be stupid. No good reason you should be able to win the National Championship if you couldn't win your smaller conference championship. I'm an OSU fan, they shouldn't have been in the playoff a year ago and I'm sort of glad they didn't make it this year. The only reason they don't do it that way is because they want to game the matchups to best fit their TV event. People would whine that one loss Georgia is better than Florida State or whoever wins the AAC and they're probably correct, but to them I say tough boogers shoulda beat Alabama.

A minor annoyance I have is when people go "you know if they expand the playoff then we'll just argue about the 12th and 13th teams" Yeah and that's obviously preferable to leaving out an undefeated power 5 conference champion in the #5 spot. If you're 3 loss LSU I really have no sympathy for you missing out - Shouldnta lost 3 games, losers. There's never gonna be a Florida State that has a real case for the playoff at #13. That's like problem #37 on the list of problems with the expanded playoff. Number one is it further devalues the regular season and further NFLizes the college game (sort of like how taking Alabama over FSU devalues the regular season). The draw of D1 college football is that every game matters, which is why telling FSU, "actually this time we decided every game doesn't matter because uhhhh we think your QB is bad" sucks so hard. I still can't believe there's a single college football fan who supports that. Problem #2 with an expanded playoff is we already have an expanded playoff in place right now in the conference championship games, they just refuse to use them as official feeders to the playoff because they like to have control over their playoff picks so they can f*** over an FSU in the event their QB is inconvenient or whatever BS reason they concoct. Expanded playoff makes the already kind of useless conference championship games into very late season exhibitions. Again, not sure why any college football fan would want those games to matter less than they already do. I think they just got really spooked by the idea of a playoff without an SEC team, which sucks. That shouldn't be a factor.

I don’t care. They won every game. Alabama didn’t.

Alabama doesn’t have a case, though. Their case is they’re Alabama. There’s exactly four teams with a case this season - The three undefeated teams and the team who beat Alabama. If you put this Tide team in Missouri’s uniforms then FSU is in the playoff right now.

There was lots of IRL bitching about that so probably lots of online bitching too. You say this like you've hatched a new take. Welcome to college football in 2014. The problem with this take is yes, there are no rules, but they've always followed a precedent that the team with the better record goes. Only when two teams have the same record do they get into the "which team would be better for ratings?" consideration. This decision throws that out for your TV show, but this is the first time they've ever kept a Power 5 team out with an undefeated record in favor of a team with a worse record. It's not really justifiable on any grounds they've ever followed. This is a new screwjob entirely.

Good point. Following this year's logic, two loss Alabama should've taken 1 loss TCU's spot in the playoff so it doesn't even track in that regard. His claim would make sense if TCU had been given the spot against UGA in the semi-final and then gotten embarrassed, but the inconvenience of TCU actually winning a playoff game and then getting embarrassed throws that out. They, by definition, belonged on the same field as Georgia. It wasn't really a fluke win against Michigan. Those two teams were very even. But the larger point is that it's not (or shouldn't be) the committee's job to consider entertainment factor when picking teams. You can't leave out a 12-0 conference champion just because you don't think they'd be fun. That logic taken to it's conclusion means you should just pick 4 teams in August and everyone can spare themselves the trouble and the injuries.

Bad take. 1. It wasn't a fluke win. They went out and beat a fellow semi-finalist. 2. They were given the chance to prove themselves and earned their way onto the same field as Georgia. A chance FSU was robbed of. That Georgia pantsed the Frogs says more about Georgia than it does TCU. They would've pantsed Michigan too. 3. Even if FSU this year is worse than TCU last year, which we don't know, it does not mean they shouldn't get their own shot at proving they don't belong, which they earned by winning every game on their schedule and that has always been the most highly regarded objective in college football.

Florida State got f***ed with a knife and I don't really want to listen to any argument that says otherwise. Every argument against them is bucking decades of precedent - From 19 dicketty until yesterday if you win every game in a power five schedule then you're ranked ahead of teams with a loss. F****** BYU has a national championship because they won every game in a season against a cupcake ass schedule that makes FSU's schedule look like a murderer's row. "But Alabama is better" They probably are. I don't care. FSU won every game. Alabama didn't. "FSU's schedule tho" I don't care. They won every game. "The QB is hurt" I don't care. They won every game. "They should've won by more." Style points only matter in tiebreakers when two teams have the same record. "Their QB is bad" I don't care. They won every game. You can't just leave an undefeated team out because they had an inconvenient injury and you think their offense wouldn't be entertaining. OSU got in with a third string QB and won it all. "They're underdogs to UGA" Who gives a :censored:? They should get the chance to be underdogs in the playoff they were :censored:ed out of. "But the game wouldn't have been exciting" I don't care, you don't know that, and there's been like three entertaining games in the history of this playoff anyway. It violates the spirit of the sport, it sends the message that Bama's loss means nothing and that FSU's perfect season means nothing, and I can't believe a single college football fan would be in support of that.

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I was gonna say "what's Dom Capers up to these days?" as a joke and then I looked it up and he's an assistant coach on the Panthers right now! Give him his old job back. It'll be funny. Richardson never had a Rock Hill situation like Tepper's had and he was smart enough to draft Cam Newton. Tepper has a long way to go to reach Snyder tier, but he's showing a lot of early promise.